> The shielding system was an official policy in the UK
Yeah, it still didn't and doesn't work though. Carers will have families, they'll have children in school, they'll potentially have more than one job. You can't shield the "carers" so you can't shield the vulnerable outside of a wider scale lockdown. Lockdown was the only thing that stopped case numbers going up till the vaccine came along.
> The risk of hospitalisation was low around the 30s and younger.
The average age in the UK is 40. So pretty much half the population would need to completely isolate from the other half while the younger half lived their lives as normal.
The age of 40 is interesting - is it from the Economist's model[0]? I don't know how accurate it is, but I would say comorbidities look a lot more serious than a general age-based approach.
People always point to "comorbidities" but many of the comorbidities in covid's case were things like "being overweight", you know, most of the population?
Most wealthy countries are getting fat, and non wealthy countries have tons of other fun things that are common but would be considered "comorbidities" like parasites, or asthma (including pollution induced asthma)
> Lockdown was the only thing that stopped case numbers going up till the vaccine came along.
Really? The graphs I have seen show cases declining even before lockdowns were imposed.
> The average age in the UK is 40. So pretty much half the population would need to completely isolate from the other half while the younger half lived their lives as normal.
The advice would have been the same, work from homes where possible. There was already the concept of "bubbles".
> Really? The graphs I have seen show cases declining even before lockdowns were imposed.
Likely because people were voluntarily locking down.
Unless you deal with schools, there are no "bubbles" or not ones that really work. Do you send teachers into schools who are in the vulnerable group? Or do you close the schools? If you close the schools you may as well do a full lockdown because so many people will have to be at home to look after their children.
The idea you can lockdown half the population by age just doesn't work because society doesn't separate itself out neatly by age.
Yeah, it still didn't and doesn't work though. Carers will have families, they'll have children in school, they'll potentially have more than one job. You can't shield the "carers" so you can't shield the vulnerable outside of a wider scale lockdown. Lockdown was the only thing that stopped case numbers going up till the vaccine came along.
> The risk of hospitalisation was low around the 30s and younger.
The average age in the UK is 40. So pretty much half the population would need to completely isolate from the other half while the younger half lived their lives as normal.
yeah, not going to happen.